To what extent does the struggle for workplace democracy overlap with the struggle for human rights? In this interview we speak with Roy Adams*, one of the world’s leading figures in the field of labour rights, former professor of industrial relations, founding member and chair of the Society for the Promotion of Human Rights in Employment, and member of the International Labour Rights Commission.
1] How do you see the outlook for workers and their unions today? Do you think the current crisis will have a major impact?
My concern has always been with the broad phenomenon of labour rights as human rights. It’s a concern that was relevant prior to the current crisis, and will be relevant long after the crisis is no more than a memory. In short,
* Labour rights are human rights
* Human rights are universal and indivisible
* Human rights are non-hierarchical – each is equally sacred and deserves to be treated with equal reverence
* Collective bargaining is a human right
* The right to refrain from bargaining is as bogus as the right to enslave oneself, or the right of minorities to freely choose a racist society
* We need to be concerned about the rights not only of workers in countries with poorly developed democratic political systems but also about the rights of workers in countries that are widely acclaimed to be advanced political democracies such as Canada, the US and Britain where labour rights violations are all too common. (more…)
Combining national case studies and comparative work, “
Richard Leitch updates his story on the exemplary solidarity work of two unions – the United Electrical Workers of America (
The recent crop of stimulus packages presents us with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to compare economic strategies. The sums involved are staggering. How will we feel when we look back on this period in 10 years? Will we wish we had all adopted Thailand’s “trickle up” model, giving money straight to those who need it most? Or will we wish we had followed the US example, covering as many bases as possible? The European Union is turning the crisis into an opportunity, and taking significant steps towards a greener world. And then there’s the option of the big spend-up on infrastructure, as exemplified by countries like Norway.
This book by
Clawson is not content to simply record developments in union organising strategies — he claims they point towards something much bigger: a genuine revival of the labour movement, ‘the next upsurge’. He reminds us that historically US labour has never developed in a regular incremental fashion but through discontinuities, including periods of upsurge where membership soars and the existing forms and expectations of trade unionism are radically redrawn. The 1930s was one such period, witnessing a dramatic shift in organising focus from craft to industry-wide basis, that transformed labour relations and impacted upon wider economic and political environments. That upheaval led to the foundation of the ‘New Deal’ labour relations system that dominated the second half of the twentieth century. Now however this framework is unable to meet the realities of a changed social and economic environment, putting the issue of labour renewal firmly on the agenda. 
In 2007 the Canadian Supreme Court affirmed the human rights status of collective bargaining; moving it, in the Canadian context, from a statutory right to a human right. In order to put that decision into perspective, network member Roy Adams traces the emergence and general characteristics of the modern international human rights regime, and then reviews the recent evolution and major aspects of collective bargaining as a human right. In this article from Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society, Adams also suggests how to bring Canadian practice into alignment with international standards. 

